Dark and Stormy

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Dark and Stormy. For the color gradient, the rum was added to the ginger beer afterwards instead of being topped up with it.
Gosling’s Black Seal Rum

Dark and Stormy ( English for dark and stormy ) is a cocktail of aged, brown rum and ginger beer , a spicy and slightly hot lemonade with a ginger flavor . It belongs to the long drinks and is sometimes also assigned to the group of highballs . As one of the very few well-known cocktails, his name is protected by trademark law and has been the subject of legal disputes several times.

Name and trademark protection

Other common spellings are Dark & ​​Stormy and (especially in the Anglo-Saxon-speaking world ) Dark 'n Stormy , Dark' N Stormy or Dark 'N' Stormy .

With the spelling DARK 'N STORMY , the name of the cocktail has been registered as a trademark in Germany since 1999 ; since 2014, there is a Union brand (at the time of registration is still CTM called). Protection includes Nice Class  33, including alcoholic beverages , cocktails and liqueurs . The trademark owner is the Gosling Brothers company based in Hamilton (Bermuda) . Among other things, it produces Gosling's Black Seal 80 Proof Bermuda Black Rum , a particularly dark rum with a characteristic aroma, with which the cocktail is traditionally mixed. Similar legal protection exists in many other countries. In the United States , Gosling Brothers now have five active registered trademarks (as of 2016), while the brand in Australia is owned by a competitor.

Only the name, not the recipe, of the cocktail is protected, so it can be mixed, modified and freely named with any ingredients. He may only use the protected brand name (including all variants with a risk of confusion ) in business dealings under certain circumstances. The brand owner alone is entitled to offer alcoholic beverages or cocktails as “Dark 'n Stormy” or to prohibit competitors from using the brand in any way other than that which it is permitted to use. And according to Gosling Brothers, a “Dark 'n Stormy” is only “genuine” if it is mixed with Gosling's Black Seal Rum . If necessary, the family company also takes legal action against trademark infringements, for example in 2009 against the rum manufacturer Zaya , who had advertised a “Dark and Stormy” with its own products. In 2015, Gosling Brothers sued the spirits group Pernod Ricard in the USA for listing the cocktail on its own marketing website as “Dark 'n Stormy”, but using the company's own rum instead of the Gosling's product as an ingredient.

Mixtures with rums other than Gosling's must therefore be offered under different names. The variant with Lamb's Navy Rum , for example, was called "Dark & ​​Gusty".

In addition to Gosling's Black Seal Rum , Gosling Brothers now not only sell their own ginger beer ( Gosling's Stormy Ginger Beer ), but also the cocktail itself as a finished product in cans with an alcohol content of 8% vol .

history

Gosling Brothers in Hamilton (Bermuda)

The Gosling Brothers company goes back to James Gosling. The son of a wine and spirits trader reached the port of Saint George's (Bermuda) in 1806 and opened a shop with his brother in the new capital Hamilton in 1824 . In 1857 the company began to blend and sell various rums - until the First World War, as was customary at the time, in barrels or directly from the barrel in containers they had brought with them. When the bottle-wise sales began afterwards, used champagne bottles were initially used. Since the corks were sealed with black wax, the Old Rum soon became known under the name Black Seal .

According to legend, the first Dark and Stormy was mixed at the bar of the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club in Hamilton, where Gosling's rum was usually sprinkled with a little soda water . One day a bartender accidentally tapped ginger beer and only subsequently added the dark brown rum over it, whereupon a sailor at the counter remarked that no one who was in comfort would want to sail under such a dark and stormy cloud. This gave the new mixture its name and was said to soon become the favorite drink of British sailors in the Bermuda Islands, according to the Gosling Brothers, in the years after the First World War .

Although the Gosling Brothers company dominated the liquor trade on the islands, their products were hardly known outside Bermuda until the 1980s, so it is not known when the Dark and Stormy became the company's signature drink . In any case, registration of the name as a trademark began in the late 1970s, beginning with Bermuda and, given the company's tight budgets, initially in the Caribbean, the United States and Europe.

In Bermuda, the cocktail was mixed with local ginger beers, most recently with Barritt's Bermuda Stone Ginger Beer , until Gosling Brothers launched their own ginger beer around 2010.

In 2011 the International Bartenders Association (IBA) added the Dark and Stormy to its list of “official IBA cocktails” and listed it there in the New Era Drinks category .

preparation

The recipe of the International Bartenders Association (IBA) calls for 6 cl dark rum (“Dark Rum”) for a “DARK 'N' STORMY”  , but does not mention a specific brand. The rum is poured into a highball glass filled with ice cubes and topped up with 10 cl ginger beer . In technical terms, the drink is "built in the glass" and finally garnished with a wedge of lime.

The mixing ratio can vary depending on the type of rum used, the sweetness and sharpness of the ginger berry and personal preferences. Gosling's recommends mixing the Black Seal Rum in a ratio of approximately 1: 3 with the in-house ginger beer.

Occasionally a little lime juice and / or sugar syrup is added to the drink .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Stephan Hinz : Cocktail art - the future of the bar. Edition Fackelträger (VEMAG Verlags- und Medien AG), Cologne 2014, ISBN 978-3-7716-4553-3 , p. 291.
  2. ↑ Information on the  trademark “Dark 'N Stormy” in the register of the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA)
  3. ↑ Information on the Union trademark number 012660882 for Dark 'N Stormy in the register of the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA)
  4. ↑ Dark 'n Stormy Live Trademark Registrations. In: tmsearch.uspto.gov ( United States Patent and Trademark Office ). Retrieved September 28, 2016 .
  5. ↑ a b c d e Jane Ryan: Trademarking cocktails. In: diffordsguide.com. Retrieved September 29, 2016 .
  6. ↑ Jonathan Miles: The Right Stuff (by Law). In: New York Times. July 2, 2009, accessed September 10, 2016 .
  7. ^ Stormy Ginger Beer. In: goslingsrum.com. Retrieved September 28, 2016 .
  8. ↑ Will the Real Dark N 'Stormy Please Stand Up? In: Daily Beast. September 22, 2015, accessed September 28, 2016 .
  9. ^ Daniel Klingenbrunn: Black Tot Day - Sailing mood with Lamb's Navy Rum. In: Drinking mood. September 10, 2014, accessed July 20, 2017 .
  10. ↑ Digital Six: The Gosling's Rum Story - The Taste Of Bermuda - Gosling's Rum. In: goslingsrum.com. June 14, 2020, accessed on September 28, 2016 .
  11. ↑ Riding Out Gosling's Dark n 'Stormy in a Can: Table To Grave. In: tabletograve.com. Retrieved September 28, 2016 .
  12. ^ Jared Keller, How the Dark 'N Stormy Became Summer's Most Litigious — And Consistent — Cocktail. In: maxim.com. June 4, 2015, accessed September 28, 2016 .
  13. ↑ It Was A Dark N 'Stormy Night: One Man's Search For The Secrets Of Gosling's Black Seal Rum. In: Huffington Post . May 25, 2011, accessed September 28, 2016 .
  14. ↑ a b DARK 'N' STORMY. In: iba-world.com. January 19, 2016, accessed September 28, 2016 .
  15. ↑ Dark 'n Stormy Cocktail. In: goslingsrum.com. Retrieved September 28, 2016 .